Date

5-20-2026

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)

Chair

Christopher Sneeringer

Keywords

Material Cultural History, material agent, material continuity, fashion, stole, immigration, identity, object biography, art history, fur, scarf, liturgical vestments, academic stoles

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | History

Abstract

This dissertation examines the stole as a material means of shaping identity in twentieth-century American society, tracing the movement across religious, cinematic, academic, political, and archival contexts. Traditionally understood as a liturgical vestment, the stole expanded in the modern era into fashion, performance, protest, and institutional ritual while maintaining a remarkably stable physical form. The study argues that the stole’s continuity is not the result of fixed tradition, but of ongoing material reconfigurations through which identity is produced, negotiated, and sustained. Rooted in material culture studies and guided by performance theory, fashion history, and archival methods, the dissertation presents rewoven identity as the main theoretical framework. Rewoven identity views identity as an embodied and relational process that develops through ongoing engagement with material objects. The stole is examined not as a static symbol but as an active participant in social life, absorbing histories of labor, migration, ethics, and memory through construction, use, preservation, and reinterpretation. Through case studies including Hollywood costume design, academic regalia and graduation stoles, fur stoles and ethical protest, Black American fur culture, Indigenous wampum and honor textiles, and contemporary digital archives, the dissertation demonstrates how the stole functions as a threshold object mediating between sacred and secular realms, personal memory and institutional authority, progression and rupture. Tracing the stole’s material biography from altar to archive, the study challenges narratives that frame modernity as a break from tradition, revealing instead continuity as an active process sustained by care, repair, stewardship, and reinterpretation across generations.

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